The Great Plunders
by Tapwater-loves-you
Summary: SPOILER WARNING  Oerba Village might be a pacifist colony, never involved in a warfare. How far could a child be pushed before she finally declares war against the shadow on the sky? Fang and Vanille centric set before FFXIII.
1. Then it began

The first plunder happened when Fang was five years old.

She and her brother Yi were at where they weren't supposed to be. Blame the stream for being so alluring. It wasn't about how it was pristine unlike the murky village beach, or that the sunlight warmed up the water just enough to be cool to dip in. It wasn't even about the birds and the butterflies, injecting life into the area rather than just having a few dead shells sitting in the sand positively looking pathetic.

The stream was out of Oerba; too far to be explored by children, in turn making it too tempting to be left alone. Yi dared her to come along, knowing that she wouldn't have backed down. He had every reason to be smug- he knew he could read her right through.

Bright-bright-bright. The valley's saturation with colours was something Fang could not comprehend. How could every leaf soak up that much green, every flower burst with the intensity that either screamed love or hatred. The saturation was deafening, so much that it didn't occur to the siblings that their world was shaking.

The children didn't know that it was possible for something so grand to have a voice until the entire valley gave into a unified scream, vibrating right into their skulls. The colours, scents and sounds mere seconds ago now over written by the synchronised organic agony, not even the wailing honeybird could pierce through.

Then the dust cloud swallowed them whole. All there was dust and splitting quietness followed by the deafening stretched boom. Oppressing silence. For a moment, all there was in the world was the never ending dust, as if nothing else had ever existed from the conception of time. Just dust, dust, dust.

Nothing could penetrate through the suffocating envelope, and the suffocation would not settle or go away.

When the siblings were found by Uncle Ole later on, he held them for minutes refusing to let go. That too was suffocating, an indication on the scale of the event. It didn't matter than they disobeyed, for that now the only thing mattered was that they were still alive.

Uncle Ole insisted on carrying Fang on his back, she played along as he seemed ready to burst in tears any second; Uncle Ole crying… surreal. They walked home in silence, not once Yi said a single word; Yi being quiet… surreal. Back at the commune, their storage quarter shattered and twisted, chunks of congregated iron in the concrete still stood erect in defiance. So surreal it was borderline comical.

Next to her house where an abandoned shed used to stand was now merely a dirt ditch. It might have been a site that used to be a patch of green, or a small parking yard. Surreal, but then it hit her. Her secret shed was gone, along with the mask she had half-made for Yi, his seventh birthday next week.

Fang was bitterer about that than losing anything else. It was never meant for the thieving Cocoon Fal'cie.

Chances were that the Cocoon Fal'cie hadn't even wanted their house. It probably only robbed Pulse because it needed a new hairdo.


	2. Now there was a hole

The second plunder was insult with delayed injury.

Two days prior to it, Fang's blood family lost their section of the living quarter. She was wrestling her brother on the couch, having a fight over who gets to try out Uncle Ahmed's new crossbow first. It started as a joke but they were growing increasingly angry. The fight was getting real.

Yi elbowed Fang's face. Fang knuckled Yi across the ear. Yi was about to land a stomp, the next they knew their couch floated away in a flash landslide that took out half of the house. Surprise- the plunder fifteen months was not satisfied with the amount of damage yet. So much of the soft soil had been taken around the village, the bottom of their house's foundation was eroding away, further and further until it no longer held.

What they used to call home was now half hanging rubble, looking like what houses would look like if a house could ever feel stupid. Where their mother stood was still the well polished wooden floor covered in rug holding a large pile of books, as if she was shell shocked actor finding herself in the wrong theatre show. Inappropriate as it was, Fang and Yi burst out laughing at the same time.

If Fang had some degree of humour over that, two days later it was no more—the Cocoon Fal'cie ripped the truck her parents was delivering up along with two miles of the highway.

Dad would never again hide sweeties around the town for the children to find. Mum would never again suddenly throw salt shaker across the table, and twinkle at Fang's accurate catch and call her a brave little warrior. Not now. Suddenly it was not funny anymore.


	3. Falling star, make a wish

The third plunder didn't happen, not officially.

The new child at their orphanage was unwell. Who could blame her, she was found at the highway shambles four days after the second plunder, rigid with shock, sitting next to the already decomposing bodies of what appeared like her blood family. By all logic she should had died with them. Maybe it was better if she had.

The miracle child, the optimistic said. The miracle child who would probably never recover, the pragmatic said. Never was a long time, though the verdict seemed increasingly likely. Four months now, and she would still not tell anyone her name, never saying a word whole day, pacing, until she fell asleep.

Fang had been egging on Yi for days to venture out to the Gran Pulse plain to find some baby chocobos to cheer up the new kid. She had her own hidden agenda, too. She was utterly sick of Yi's sulking by now, and if helping out a new kid was what was needed, Fang was going to drag Yi along whether he wanted it or not.

Funny how when it first happened, Yi was the one who dealt with the deaths with so much bravery: it frustrated and angered Fang, for that she was trying so hard to stay stoic yet several times a day, the thought of her parents would creep up on her, blanketing her with chest aches that did not allow her a thought of dismissal. Yet two weeks later, when she had come to getting through a whole day without an attack, Yi welted away. It had been a while now, he was becoming more and more withdrawn, so much that Fang thought if she didn't force him to get out and do something, he was going to turn into a boy shaped concrete slab and shatter into pile of ash.

It exhausted all of Fang's verbal negotiation skills to finally get Yi to come with her. He was still quieter than usual, only grunting to Fang's taunts. But she could tell that he was lighting up, and by the time they'd reached Archylte Steppe Fang could've sworn there were traces of smile.

Cocoon Fal'cie didn't want anything this time. Instead they scrunched whatever they robbed from Gran Pulse before, and threw it back. The gigantic rubbish ball composed of steel, concrete, bricks and mortar; it could've landed anywhere. It was luck, incredible luck, that meant it only landed on one of the siblings. And then Fang was the last one left behind.

When Fang lost her parents, she thought it would've been that less painful if she was there to see them for the last time. How naive she had been. The image of Yi's crushed body would never be scrubbed out of her head. There was hardly any blood. His legs beneath the knees were virtually untouched, socks unmatched. If Fang blocked away the rest with her hand, she could almost convince herself that Yi was only taking a nap on his belly, on the soft carpet of green grass under a giant silly pillow. This was the only time she ever knew him to be a peaceful sleeper. Maybe she shouldn't move her hand at all.

She wondered if that was what people meant when they said first step was denial.

Fang hadn't cried since losing her mask, she wasn't about to start now. All she could do was cycle this one thought in her head, through and through, the thought of what if her parents' truck was part of the unidentifiable mess, weighing in to kill her brother.

The sun was still shining, blindingly bright. Fang lay next to the mass, it was as close to being next to Yi as she'd ever get, ever again. She just laid there, stared back at the sun. Her retina screaming, it was the cleansing she needed to bleach out everything else in the world.

For now, she only had to deal with the bright spot blindingly painful her eyes. Let it burn. Let it burn. Even then, she still could feel the phantom touch on her palms, the tingle from dragging Yi by the elbow.

He didn't even want to come.


	4. Not that unique

Only when directly questioned about Yi, Fang would mentally calculate how long it had been since his passing. Thank the Fal'cies for a solid number, because sometimes it still felt recent enough that she was the one who was left behind. Not that it mattered, because Cocoon was only going to take away anything she tried to gain. Happiness. Family. Home.

When Yi first died, Fang thought she had been emptied out, there were nothing left to take, nothing worthy to bother. Then the child she tried to save turned around, and possibly saved her instead.

Ironic, really. In the beginning Fang practically cornered the kid every day, and just poured her heart out. Fang couldn't talk to anyone else, for that she knew them too well. The child never spoke a word, so part of Fang saw her as the silent therapist, the only person who wouldn't try to tell her what to think, or to judge her for the unfamiliar crippling weakness that plagued her more often than she could ever admit to anyone. Fang just talked and talked into the blank face, and then one day she slipped a past tense to describe her brother.

It was a betrayal for as far as Fang concerned. She froze in mid sentence in realisation, terrified to register that the words came from her own mouth. Then the child spoke for the first time ever since she was found: "It's okay. I think of Mum and Pop like that, too."

Through the week, Fang learned more and more about this child. Her name was Vanille. She used to live at the other edge of Oerba, come to think about it Fang may have run into her a few times in community gathering. Vanille had a big blood family, every single one solidly introverted and private except for her. How her blood family received an exclusive vacation package as her parents' 15th wedding anniversary, the one that everyone else was excited about but dreaded Vanille for that she did not want to be separated from rest of the Oerba. She had a fight with her sister in the backseat, and her Mum made her get out of the car. She remembered running off the road hating her exclusive family, hoping that Pulse Fal'cie would take them away so she could stay with rest of Oerba.

Within seconds, it was Cocoon Fal'cie did just that. Her blood family. Fang's parents. The entire chunk of the road and then some more.

Upon learning about her blood family's demise, she wanted to go with them. She dug her way to her family, and just stayed there. When she was found, she just stayed stiff hoping the village would write her off. Then she refused to talk, hoping to be banished for being bad. Then she could just wait in the wilderness. Long enough, and she would be with her blood family.

She hadn't accepted that she was now a world apart from the rest until Fang shared her pain, too.

For once, Fang understood. The whole time she was furious at people who tried to tell her how they "understood" while they had no idea what she was dealing with, maybe indeed, they did.


	5. Onesided no more

The fourth plunder didn't happen for a very long time. Cocoon Fal'cie must had enjoyed how they kept the Gran Pulse guessing, they hinted 'boo' and watched the insects jump: a tease on the ever terse nerves of the Oerba, having them ready to jump at the lightest tremble.

Rhythm and cycles were the roots of Oerba's lives. Even the non-hunters in the village knew Gran Pulse like they knew their own bodies. There were always two big floods annually. One in the spring, bulging up the streams and waking up the fruit trees, then one in the late summer bringing the people fleshy fish. Sandwiched in between was a great bushfire every year around the hottest time in summer, when the grasses were tall and bent under their own weight, dried to splinter, cleaning up patches of dense area, leaving a renewed ground for the next generation of flora to soar.

The same sort of punctuality was precisely something the Cocoon Fal'cie loved to mock. Didn't know it was possible to be ungrateful toward peace, yet the unpredictability was surprisingly unbearable on its own. Now they would not fix the bridge this week, for that next robbery was about to be due. Now they had to hold off the harvesting by another two weeks, watching the only food source rotting away fearing that any minute, Cocoon was about to take them all.

Put the entire life cycle on hold, for the next possible raid that the village was so convinced that was about to happen. Soon. Any minute now; just twiddling, waiting.

Vanille was two years behind Fang at school, so they spent most of their school days apart. Even then, they had long become each other's shadow, with the closeness that no one else in the same year level could even begin to comprehend. Some days they would just get out to the sorry patch of grass on their school roof, the area so tiny it could've been trimmed with nail clippers, their private space. Just sitting there, watching the clouds and talking, until they fell asleep leaning on each other's back.

When Fang was old enough to be assigned an after school job, she picked security without hesitation. Not that realistically she expected to put up a fight against Cocoon Fal'cies. Still her mind, one day, she would be so powerful and so fearless, she would put a dent in Cocoon. Then she would turn the dent into hole, rip it to shreds and savour on its agony. They would hurt Gran Pulse no more.

It was the fantasy that Vanille knew too well. Upon hearing that Fang got into security training the first try, Vanille vowed that she'd do the same. The headmaster in their school was less convinced when Vanille suddenly turning up and demanded to change her Drama unit for Close Quarter Combat, her classmates were even less convinced half way through the first class.

Vanille couldn't care less about their approval. There were more important things that mattered to her. Like Fang's genuine surprise over her progress over just two months into the school year. Like how the recruiting agency mailed back that if she bulked up she well stood a chance. Like the Trouble Trio back in the orphanage would wake her up every morning with iron basin and aluminium baseball bat, then lining up glowing, asking her if she's going to go and get Cocoon today.

Vanille had long since come to calling each of Pulse's robberies 'plunders', as how Fang called them. Practical too, their collectively shared experience matched their similarity in age seamlessly.

By that, the one where Pulse killed half of her class would have been the fourth plunder. The half of the stream went for their turn in the Bush Survivors trip, a dreadful program name in hindsight. Losing the people she knew with little warning, something she didn't think she could ever get used to. Gone was Jozie, who wouldn't shut up about every little new illness he was acquiring. Lenylk, who'd wear a lightly bloodstained singlet weeks on end as a badge of honour, stinking out the room so much their teacher had to hide in the bathroom or half a day. Icicia no more: not that she and Vanille ever exchanged anything beside a "good morning".

Vanille didn't even like some of them, and now all she wanted was to have them walking through her classroom door, even if they snob her off or make some off-handed remarks. It was the loss of people who, by the time it's too late she realised that at some stage, maybe they could've been good friends.

Not that any of these were Cocoon's concern. Just rob what they like- kaboom, there, done.

It was insulting, how they kept on getting killed. It wasn't killing out of hatred, vendetta or malice, nothing enough to be accounted as a personification of murders. The kills weren't even intentional, it was just that their people were in the way, some arbitrary non-factors that wasn't even worthy of Cocoon's acknowledgement.

It should have made Vanille angry, instead she was sad.

She met up with Fang again, the old patch of roof grass overlooking the ocean. Fang twisted a piece of paper for what felt like forever, before finally announcing that she wanted to become Ragnorak. Rare opportunities indeed carried solid promise, in exchange for a gruesome, uncompromising price. When clearing out the site, Fang found this sheet among the clutter, a scroll on applying to the Pulse Fal'Cie to turn into something else – the legendary beast that transcends physical limitations, soaring upon the world above; the legendary beast that could rip Cocoon out of the sky forever. In exchange for their humanity, they protect Gran Pulse from any more of the plunders to come.

Fang expected Vanille to object. Instead, Vanille took it one step further.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we became the Ragnorak, together?" She was serious.

If she could just tag along, aiding Fang, doing her part, protect Gran Pulse once for all. She was sick of waiting too, sick of all the losses and the futility of hoping to wait out for the goodness of the other side to finally kick in. How could anyone directly question someone that refused to admit your existence?

Becoming Ragnorak, not as an equal but now no longer dismissible either, then Cocoon had to listen.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Credit: Huge thank you to Pyro/Maddi who proof read this for me.


End file.
